Latest / AST SpaceMobile Podcast / Anpanman - SpaceX Secondary Sale Value at $800B + 2H 2026 IPO? Implications for the sector

Transcript

Anpanman - SpaceX Secondary Sale Value at $800B + 2H 2026 IPO? Implications for the sector · AST SpaceMobile Podcast

• 0:06
  This is the AST Space Mobile podcast.
• 0:10
  Where we just basically come your phone be seamless
• 0:14
  regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to
• 0:16
  know that it's connected by satellite.
• 0:21
  Listen, the opportunity that we have is very, very, very large.
• 0:27
  Hey everyone, I guess I'm going to be doing multiple multiple
• 0:32
  spaces a day because there's just all kinds of news coming
• 0:35
  out. It seems like there's never a
• 0:37
  dull day in space. Yeah, so so actually there's an
• 0:44
  update here from Wall Street Journal.
• 0:45
  Let me look here. Let's see if there's any news
• 0:49
  here play. I'm going to just read this Wall
• 0:56
  Street Journal update looks like so it's weird Bloomberg has they
• 1:04
  haven't been able to confirm the $800 billion number.
• 1:08
  I think Bloomberg's still on the old evaluation of 500 billion.
• 1:11
  But then bar Street Journal, they just updated their story
• 1:14
  saying that the secondary share sale is at 800 billion.
• 1:19
  And this is the Spacex's CFO Brett Johnson has told investors
• 1:25
  about in recent days, the people said so it's multiple sources.
• 1:28
  Let's see here. So that's basically double the
• 1:30
  value that they had back in October for a secondary share
• 1:35
  sale. So I guess for any insiders that
• 1:38
  sold chairs back in October, they're probably gnashing our
• 1:41
  teeth upset that they didn't get double the price.
• 1:44
  Let me just see her screen through this.
• 1:50
  It also talks about like how his business empire is facing growth
• 1:54
  challenges. But the rocket and satellite
• 1:56
  company remains stronger than ever with its dominant position
• 2:00
  in launch. And then Starlink is doing well,
• 2:03
  has like more than 8 million active customers, which is
• 2:07
  driving up the valuation. So just a reminder for people,
• 2:12
  this is a secondary share of sales.
• 2:14
  So it's not the company's not raising what we call a primary
• 2:18
  sale. They're not raising, the
• 2:20
  company's not raising money on its behalf.
• 2:21
  It's not selling a piece of the company.
• 2:23
  It's actually insider selling out.
• 2:25
  So imagine it says it's a tender.
• 2:28
  So it's, it's an opportunity for employees and investors to
• 2:32
  monetize their, their, their sale, their shares.
• 2:37
  And you know, this is pretty common for tech companies that
• 2:40
  have gone, that haven't gone public for a really long time.
• 2:44
  And, you know, you have insiders that want some level of
• 2:47
  liquidity and to keep people happy, you you present them with
• 2:52
  opportunities to sell stock periodically.
• 2:56
  And so that's what this tender is.
• 2:59
  Let's see here. One of the things it says here,
• 3:05
  I'm just going through this Wall Street Journal update and I'll,
• 3:11
  I'll tweet this out. OK, I'm going to tweet this out.
• 3:19
  But yeah, I wanted to talk about what this means or AST, but also
• 3:23
  Rocket Lab and the rest of the sector.
• 3:27
  I'm going to just post this. People can see what they wrote.
• 3:35
  The weird thing is like when you copy stuff from Bloomberg, it
• 3:38
  doesn't format it properly for you.
• 3:41
  You, you put into a tweet. So you got a, you got a format,
• 3:44
  which is a pain in the ass. Let's see.
• 3:48
  So I think that's the entire article.
• 3:50
  So I'm going to tweet this out. You know, it's kind of funny
• 3:55
  when you this kind of minutia, but whenever you tweet things,
• 4:01
  you you tend to get better engagement if you put a picture,
• 4:04
  a picture along with it. So I'm going to find a picture.
• 4:08
  But yeah, this this is pretty big news.
• 4:11
  I mean, of course, the other big news, you know, the information
• 4:13
  not to be 1 upped disclosed and you know, the, the information
• 4:18
  depending on who the journalist is, they've been come up
• 4:21
  somewhat spotty in terms of their record.
• 4:23
  But they, they're claiming that SpaceX is looking or is told
• 4:29
  investors that's looking to go public in the second-half of
• 4:33
  2026, which is a big deal for the, for the sector.
• 4:37
  And I'll talk about why that is, but let me just put this out
• 4:41
  there. So, yeah, Wall Street Journal,
• 4:43
  the updated article, as I mentioned before, Bloomberg,
• 4:48
  they put out a basically a reputation piece.
• 4:50
  They're refuting it. They're saying, yeah, they're
• 4:53
  going to do a tender, but we have no indication that it's
• 4:55
  going to be a double the price that what they were talking
• 4:57
  about before. Just so people know, Bloomberg
• 5:00
  put on an article and said that the share sale could be could
• 5:06
  value it at 560 billion, which in of itself is still pretty
• 5:10
  crazy, right, Because the company had did a tender in
• 5:15
  October that was valued at 400 billion.
• 5:17
  And now depending on who you believe, either it's going to be
• 5:20
  at 560 billion from Bloomberg or 800 billion of the Wall Street
• 5:24
  Journal, 800 billion being basically double the valuation
• 5:27
  in I guess a month and 1/2 time. So anyway, that's, that's pretty
• 5:33
  big. I mean, that just shows you the
• 5:37
  level of interest in the space sector.
• 5:39
  And I think to see, you know, Spacex's progress around launch,
• 5:45
  obviously they're, they're still pushing forward with Starship
• 5:48
  and they, they, they were, you know, they, they still have a
• 5:52
  lot of milestones to hit before that thing can be fully
• 5:54
  commercial. But Starling for all intensive
• 5:56
  purposes have been quite successful on the fixed wireless
• 5:59
  side. And then the direct to sell
• 6:01
  efforts, you know, they picked up some additional M and OS
• 6:04
  actually need to update my my sheet.
• 6:06
  Like they picked up KDDI and SoftBank in Japan on top of NTT
• 6:11
  Docomo. So they pretty much have a lock
• 6:13
  on Japan, which makes sense because we have a, a, a mutually
• 6:19
  exclusive agreement with Rakuten or Rakuten has exclusivity in
• 6:24
  Japan. So even if SoftBank or NTT
• 6:28
  Docomo or KDDI wanted to work with us that, that we just
• 6:31
  can't. Rakuten, by the way, was like
• 6:34
  early seed investor and you know, they were not seed master,
• 6:37
  but they were, they were right after some of the earliest
• 6:41
  investors in AST space mobile. And without them, we wouldn't be
• 6:44
  here today. So, so they're they're an
• 6:47
  important customer. And Mickey Mikutani sits on the
• 6:50
  board of the company and and yeah, we utilize some of their O
• 6:54
  ran software. But anyway, but yeah, this is
• 6:58
  big news. I mean, Starlink has been making
• 7:00
  good progress and so is SpaceX a big part of Starlink's growth
• 7:05
  story. If you look at there's a few
• 7:07
  research analysts that do cover SpaceX and when they break out
• 7:11
  some of the numbers between Starlink fix Wireless and
• 7:14
  Starlink direct to sell, a, a vast majority of growth for
• 7:17
  Starlink is going to come from direct to sell.
• 7:19
  I mean, in particular number of subscribers, which is obvious
• 7:22
  because there's a lot of devices.
• 7:25
  But then in terms of ARPU, there's going to be a pretty big
• 7:30
  level of contribution. I think I forgot like when I
• 7:34
  looked at it last, I think direct to sell is going to
• 7:37
  account for like 2/3 of Starlink's growth and maybe
• 7:39
  probability, you know, in the out years.
• 7:41
  But anyway, with the company potentially going public, that's
• 7:47
  going to draw a lot more interest to the space sector.
• 7:49
  And so, you know, someone had a question when I, when I was kind
• 7:52
  of going through this information, they, they were
• 7:54
  questioning whether or not perhaps this SpaceX going public
• 7:59
  might suck capital out and cause other names in the sector to go
• 8:02
  down. I guess it's possible, like some
• 8:05
  people who are invested in Rocket Lab or AC space mobile
• 8:09
  might sell part of their position and and by SpaceX.
• 8:12
  But I think the opposite's actually going to happen because
• 8:15
  I think, you know, you, we're at this point where space is kind
• 8:19
  of like this backwater, this like cottage industry.
• 8:22
  I mean, it was like this certainly like this like a few
• 8:27
  years ago, like 2023-2024. If if you went to a hedge fund
• 8:31
  and and ask them like, hey, do you have any specialists that
• 8:34
  cover the sector, there'd be, there wouldn't be anyone because
• 8:37
  there's not enough market cap and not enough companies to have
• 8:42
  industry specialists covering space.
• 8:44
  But now you've got pretty big sizable companies, trunky
• 8:49
  companies to invest in. You know, Rocket Lab is, let's
• 8:53
  see, Rocket Lab is 2328 billion in size.
• 8:58
  You know, HD Space Mobile is 27 billion, obviously not, not all
• 9:02
  that is tradable because you know, Abell owns a bunch of
• 9:07
  Class C shares which are included in that calculation.
• 9:09
  But it's a big company and, and you know, we raised E Space
• 9:12
  Mobile, what we used to be a basically a small cap company
• 9:17
  when it was like 6 or $7,000,000, you know, betrayed
• 9:20
  like some days we would trade 100,000 shares.
• 9:23
  Now it trades 10 million shares. And so that's a very liquid
• 9:26
  company that you can invest in. And so the sector has matured
• 9:29
  quite a bit. I mean, not only do you have
• 9:31
  these companies that grew up from being a SPAC, but you have
• 9:35
  these other players, whether it's Voyager, which is like 1.4
• 9:38
  billion in market cap. Let's see, I guess Red Wire
• 9:42
  after they close edge autonomy is about a billion.
• 9:46
  And then you've got, let me see here, Black Sky.
• 9:53
  Black Sky is like 670 to 660. And then of course, you've got
• 9:57
  like some of the legacy guys. I mean, of course, Echostar,
• 10:01
  it's now trading in a pretty nice valuation of 23.6 billion.
• 10:06
  Obviously, a big chunk of that is the private SpaceX shares
• 10:09
  that it owns, but it also has 31 billion of debt.
• 10:11
  So Echostar is like 51 billion enterprise value, which is
• 10:15
  pretty nuts. But what this does though is
• 10:20
  when SpaceX comes public going into the second-half of next
• 10:25
  year, there's going to be this mad scramble.
• 10:28
  I mean, actually this this news and of itself is going to get
• 10:30
  people interested in the sector. And so you're going to have
• 10:32
  you're going to have both investors, generalists, tech
• 10:37
  investors, you know, aerospace, defense guys, they're all going
• 10:40
  to get a bit smarter about the public companies that are out
• 10:42
  there. And so you're just going to draw
• 10:44
  more interest. And, and then, you know,
• 10:46
  eventually there's going to be formation of groups that are
• 10:50
  specifically focused on the space sector.
• 10:51
  Because I think, you know, if you're doing long, short
• 10:53
  fundamental investing, you want to have specialists who really
• 10:56
  understand the underlying dynamics of the industry and,
• 11:00
  and all the different companies and how they're all intertwined,
• 11:02
  which in space, that's that's the case.
• 11:05
  Like there's, you know, companies that are in
• 11:07
  competition with each other, They also service each other.
• 11:10
  I mean, SpaceX is a prime example of that where they, they
• 11:14
  do, they provide launch and they compete with other launch
• 11:17
  providers, but they also send up other people's satellites,
• 11:20
  right. And and so, so understanding,
• 11:25
  having a deep understanding of all that, which quite frankly,
• 11:28
  if you've been falling sector and have been an investor in AST
• 11:32
  or, or Rocket Lab, you, you actually know these dynamics
• 11:34
  quite well. And so I don't know, maybe some
• 11:36
  of you guys will get a job at a hedge fund being their their
• 11:40
  expert anyway. But yeah, as as you approach the
• 11:44
  IPO, there's going to be people doing work and they're going to
• 11:47
  learn about some of these other companies.
• 11:49
  And the thing that the thing that happens is like you're
• 11:53
  going to get more dollars into the sector and it's going to
• 11:56
  become a stand alone investable area.
• 11:58
  And and then, you know, there's going to be whether it's ETS,
• 12:03
  you know, sector mutual funds, there's going to be people
• 12:07
  focusing dollars in this area. And it's just going to help the
• 12:10
  entire ecosystem. And the good thing about SpaceX
• 12:13
  going public is that then you're going to have this transparency
• 12:16
  into what SpaceX is doing. Like at this point, everybody
• 12:19
  kind of speculates and just depends, I mean, on what, you
• 12:23
  know, what the company's comments are from time to time
• 12:25
  for the public or Elon Musk. And it's funny, even if you
• 12:29
  know, I've, I've had three or four chances.
• 12:32
  I mean, pretty much probably most investors of some size have
• 12:37
  had had some chance to take a look at SpaceX and and invest.
• 12:40
  But taking a look, that's like a very loose term because often
• 12:45
  times when you invest, it has to be through a special purpose
• 12:48
  vehicle, which then pulls money, then invests in SpaceX shares.
• 12:54
  And that, you know, SPV will take some fee upfront and or you
• 13:00
  know, some management fee on an ongoing basis of maybe 1 to 2%
• 13:03
  and then it'll take 15 to 20% of the UPS.
• 13:06
  And so that's not really a great way to invest.
• 13:08
  But if you want access, you know, there's, there's all
• 13:11
  cottage industry around firms that are, that are big enough
• 13:15
  and have relationships where they get access to private
• 13:18
  shares. And then they create these SPVS
• 13:19
  and then they basically, you know, sell off pieces of that
• 13:22
  SPV. But when they do that, often
• 13:26
  times the only information you get is like very high level,
• 13:30
  this is what SpaceX does and this is what the plan needed to
• 13:33
  do. But there's really no, I mean,
• 13:35
  depending on your level of access, but even private
• 13:37
  investors like they don't get access to full financials, which
• 13:41
  is pretty crazy. And, and this isn't just for
• 13:43
  SpaceX, it's for other hot private companies that are doing
• 13:47
  these types of private play, I mean, secondary sales or sales
• 13:52
  through SPDS. And so even over my years, and
• 13:58
  maybe I'll post this actually, because I, I, there was a
• 14:00
  Goldman Sachs offering document that I, I had to look at for
• 14:03
  SpaceX chairs and there was basically like no financial
• 14:06
  information. And that that's, that's just
• 14:08
  kind of how private investing is when you're, when you're, you
• 14:13
  know, not a institutional VC, right?
• 14:16
  But even some of those guys don't Get full access to
• 14:19
  financials. But the great thing about SpaceX
• 14:22
  going public is like we're going to get full transparency on how
• 14:27
  the rocket business is doing, you know, launch, how Starlink
• 14:29
  is doing, you know what other, I mean, depending it depending on
• 14:33
  how much the SEC pushes them. And then of course what they
• 14:36
  want to disclose as KPIs, then we might see get some level of
• 14:42
  granularity of like, you know, how much of the businesses is
• 14:45
  being driven by fixed wireless versus direct to sell.
• 14:48
  Maybe they will disclose some level of detail, probably not,
• 14:53
  but some level of detail of how their their contracts are
• 14:56
  structured. Like with T-Mobile, for example.
• 14:58
  I mean, we know that the exclusivity with T-Mobile is
• 15:01
  going to end in 2026. And then, you know, at that
• 15:03
  point, T-Mobile is free to go do something else or add somebody
• 15:06
  else. Or, you know, SpaceX could also
• 15:09
  try to, you know, try to pursue AT&T or Verizon.
• 15:12
  Hope we know how that story ends.
• 15:13
  But what's what's good though, is that people are going to get
• 15:17
  a better sense for, you know, what is the the proxy for space
• 15:22
  SpaceX, they're going to have a better sense of how the
• 15:24
  company's performing. And for competitors, it's going
• 15:27
  to be very eye opening and helpful, right?
• 15:29
  Because then competitors are. And This is why some companies
• 15:33
  stay private for as long as they can because they don't want to
• 15:35
  this stuff out in the public. But, you know, SpaceX is at that
• 15:38
  point when they go public, they're going to be also exposed
• 15:42
  to public scrutiny. And so, you know, for a company
• 15:45
  that had talked about Starship landing on the moon when it was
• 15:50
  first announced, you know, that they were planning to land on
• 15:52
  the moon by 2022. This whole level of scrutiny,
• 15:55
  they're going to they're going to easily come under the same
• 15:58
  pressure that the rest of these public companies in space face,
• 16:02
  right? And So what I mean by that is
• 16:05
  obviously space is really hard. We, we, we harp about this over
• 16:08
  and over again and delays are inevitable.
• 16:11
  And so, you know, that's going to be a pretty big reminder as a
• 16:15
  public company. And it's also, you know, I think
• 16:19
  public investors in SpaceX are going to have to get used to,
• 16:21
  you know, when you're a private investor, you don't, there's no
• 16:24
  volatility whatever the shares, some small portion portion of
• 16:28
  shares that were transacted any given month like that sets the
• 16:31
  evaluation for the company for until the next time, right?
• 16:35
  And so if you blow up a few rockets, like no one really
• 16:38
  cares because they don't, they don't feel the visceral movement
• 16:40
  of the stock price reacting to that versus, you know, when you
• 16:45
  have when you're public and let's say Starship goes up and
• 16:49
  maybe there's, you know, this last Starship test, like on the
• 16:52
  launchpad, you know, they, they had a static fire and then the
• 16:55
  thing blew up. Other investors will probably
• 16:59
  react to that, right? And so that's going to be
• 17:01
  something to get used to. And so I think, you know, for
• 17:06
  the, for the sector, as I was saying before, it'll be good for
• 17:09
  folks to see what the economics are for SpaceX on the launch
• 17:14
  side and, and on the communication side, because, you
• 17:17
  know, these are two businesses that are relatively scaled.
• 17:19
  And so, you know, if you're a Rocket Lab holder, you might try
• 17:24
  to do some comparisons and see if gross margins are similar
• 17:28
  operating margins, you know, maybe months Rocket Lab gets to
• 17:33
  medium launch and it's on a regular cadence.
• 17:35
  Then maybe SpaceX, if those margins are pretty attractive,
• 17:39
  that's kind of the target that you want to go achieve, or at
• 17:41
  least that's best in class. And on the flip side for
• 17:44
  Starlink, you know, obviously fix wireless is, is is a pretty
• 17:47
  profitable business, but then the direct to sell, you know,
• 17:51
  that will be something that HD space mobile investors can cop
• 17:54
  against. You know, hey, we're
• 17:55
  outperforming them or we're underperforming them.
• 17:57
  And then as a public company, they'll disclose or need to
• 18:02
  disclose, you know, which M and OS they're working with.
• 18:05
  And, you know, investor or sell side analysts are going to ask
• 18:08
  them calls like, you know, what's your win rate against ASD
• 18:12
  space mobile for M and OS? And why haven't you guys gotten
• 18:14
  more M and OS or, you know, how are you different from ASD?
• 18:18
  And there's going to be like this whole deluge of research
• 18:20
  coverage that comes in that that are going to have to, I mean,
• 18:24
  and you know, there's going to be like every firm on the
• 18:27
  street, you know, 20-30 research analysts are going to cover
• 18:30
  SpaceX. And all those are going to have
• 18:33
  initiations of coverage. And as part of those initiations
• 18:35
  of coverage, we'll talk about the space industry and the
• 18:38
  competitive landscape and who the players are.
• 18:39
  And so it's going to be a big coming out party for the sector.
• 18:45
  And so for names like, you know, ASD Space Mobile or, you know,
• 18:50
  some of these others, Rocket Lab, Firefly, you name it, like
• 18:55
  people are going to become, they're going to become more
• 18:58
  household names, right? Because then for these like
• 19:01
  crazy space companies that people ignored, like they're
• 19:04
  going to have to focus, not by choice necessarily, but they're
• 19:08
  going to focus. And so, yeah, it's going to be a
• 19:11
  big positive for the sector. It's going to bring more
• 19:13
  awareness. You're going to have a
• 19:16
  juggernaut that's trained, that's going to bring a
• 19:18
  tremendous amount of investing dollars.
• 19:20
  And it's going to cause different dynamics.
• 19:22
  Like people are going to look at SpaceX and if it trades at a big
• 19:25
  premium evaluation, premium evaluation relative to its
• 19:27
  growth, then people are going to extrapolate that into some of
• 19:31
  these other companies and say, oh, you know, AC space mobile is
• 19:34
  actually like from a valuation multiple perspective, It's it's
• 19:38
  really cheap. So I'm going to own some SpaceX,
• 19:41
  but I'm also going to buy some AC as well.
• 19:44
  And you know, the same for rocket maybe.
• 19:47
  And then the the other thing that's going to happen, of
• 19:50
  course, is you're going to get some people that are going to
• 19:53
  short space companies because they're going to say, I own
• 19:56
  SpaceX and I need to hedge it. Like if you run, if you if
• 19:59
  you're at like a fund that requires, you know, it's market
• 20:03
  neutral, then they might go long SpaceX and they short some AST
• 20:07
  and Rocket Lab and a basket of others, depending on how they
• 20:10
  want to manage their exposures. Although I would argue that that
• 20:14
  probably is already happening and that that probably accounts
• 20:18
  for some of the short interest in all these names, like people
• 20:20
  who are long. SpaceX on the private side and
• 20:22
  then they actually had some of these space names that are
• 20:26
  public. So that probably is happening to
• 20:28
  a degree. But.
• 20:30
  But yeah, they'll be all these interesting dynamics, right?
• 20:32
  And I think by having SpaceX public, you know, it's overall,
• 20:39
  it's just going to be a huge net positive.
• 20:43
  And then of course, like people are going to turn their eyes
• 20:45
  toward Blue Origin and say, OK, well, when's Blue Origin going
• 20:48
  to go public or is it going to go public?
• 20:49
  And of course, there's no valuation metrics around that
• 20:53
  company because pretty much it's, it's fully funded by Jeff
• 20:57
  Bezos. And so they haven't, I actually,
• 20:59
  I'm not sure if they've taken any outside money or if they've
• 21:02
  sold any or if he's sold any of that company aside from, you
• 21:05
  know, just giving stock to employees who just given how
• 21:08
  long Lord has been private there, there's probably some
• 21:12
  employees itching to monetize some of their shares.
• 21:14
  So, but yeah, I think, I think heading into the 1st half of
• 21:21
  2026, I mean, this is you can ask for more bullish news for
• 21:24
  the sector because you've got Golden Dome, which you know,
• 21:29
  it's, it's the big awards are probably coming in the next few
• 21:33
  weeks to tour to probably, you know, the end of January.
• 21:38
  And so that's, that's a huge catalyst.
• 21:41
  Then you've got SpaceX, if they actually get this secondary
• 21:46
  share sale off and some employees are able to tender
• 21:48
  their shares at a $800 billion evaluation, which, you know,
• 21:52
  I'd, I'd remind people that, and This is why I tweeted before,
• 21:56
  but SpaceX, you know, if you look at current credit for
• 22:00
  contribution terms of revenue and operating income, you know,
• 22:03
  it's, it's probably around 6570%.
• 22:06
  And so if you just did just a simple math of, let's say it's
• 22:09
  65% of 800, that's that implies 520 billion dollar evaluation
• 22:15
  for Starlink. And then of course, the
• 22:17
  remainder of that is launch. And so if you're a SpaceX or
• 22:20
  sorry, if you're ASD space mobile shareholder or Rocket Lab
• 22:24
  shareholder, that's very relevant to you because that,
• 22:28
  that, you know, companies to a degree will trade at within
• 22:33
  ranges of, you know, we, we call, you know, comparable
• 22:35
  evaluations. And so if it turns out when
• 22:40
  research analysts initiate coverage and, and we and when we
• 22:43
  look at the proxy, when they file the IPO prospectus, I mean,
• 22:46
  when they file it and you get to see some of the historical
• 22:48
  financials, people are merely going to start looking, doing
• 22:51
  comparisons of evaluations of existing companies to to SpaceX.
• 22:56
  And you know, SpaceX arguably should trade at a decent
• 22:59
  premium, right, Because it's a one of the kind company, it's at
• 23:01
  scale, it's, it's the juggernauts industry leader.
• 23:04
  And so it should trade at some premium valuation relative to
• 23:07
  the others. But then the the balance to
• 23:10
  that, of course, is that the smaller companies probably have
• 23:13
  much more rapid growth prospects because for a company as big as
• 23:16
  SpaceX, if it's at a $800 billion valuation, how much
• 23:20
  upside is there, right? And versus for some of these
• 23:23
  smaller companies that were the 10X over the same period or who
• 23:26
  knows, right? So, So, yeah, that's, that's a
• 23:30
  big positive. And I think the other thing is,
• 23:35
  you know, the, the valuation uplift, they're probably what
• 23:38
  SpaceX is trying to do in doing these tenders at ever increasing
• 23:43
  value values is as a private company, you want to see a step
• 23:47
  up in valuation and in a steady cadence of that until you go
• 23:51
  public because then it supports or it's supposed to support a
• 23:54
  high valuation when you go public.
• 23:56
  So if they're targeting 800 billion now, the second-half of
• 24:01
  2026 is probably going to go public in a trillion, right?
• 24:05
  And, and they're hoping that through the progression of these
• 24:10
  subsequent, you know, valuation data points that people will be
• 24:14
  comfortable with company trading at north of a trillion, right,
• 24:17
  'cause the, the company, they'll probably, you know, value coming
• 24:21
  into Troian, they'll price it at a discount, you know, maybe 10%
• 24:24
  discount to entice IPO investors.
• 24:27
  And then, you know, you'll get that pop on the first day and
• 24:29
  then hopefully it trades there until the lock up expiry comes.
• 24:33
  And then you start having some insult or solo.
• 24:36
  But yeah, this is big news. And I think as we set up for
• 24:41
  2026, just having this backdrop, you know, you've got rate, a
• 24:47
  very accommodative rate environment and hopefully knock
• 24:49
  on wood, inflation continues to be held in check and it's it's
• 24:54
  moderate. And then you've got this huge
• 24:58
  event of SpaceX core in public. It's just going to bring more
• 25:01
  excitement. And then of course, you know, as
• 25:03
  I mentioned before, a golden Dome and any number of other
• 25:06
  catalysts. So, so this is this is good
• 25:08
  news. I think, you know, when I saw
• 25:11
  the news it I immediately bought a little bit of AST and then of
• 25:16
  course, it popped a little. And then of course, you know,
• 25:19
  the for the people who are playing some of the parts story
• 25:21
  for Echostar, you know, there's that that stock is up because
• 25:24
  obviously they own some SpaceX shares.
• 25:26
  But yeah, I think I think let's see here this reading this.
• 25:34
  Yeah, it's this is I'm sure we're going to see more stories
• 25:38
  and then there will be this catalyst around whether or not
• 25:40
  those shares do get sold. And and yeah, it's I, I'm, I'm
• 25:48
  about as bullish as can be on AST just given all the catalysts
• 25:51
  that are coming up. I actually need to update my,
• 25:55
  you know, Catalyst tracker or whatever Catalyst season posted
• 25:58
  that I normally do because there's quite a bit that's where
• 26:00
  you happen. But anyway, I just wanted to hop
• 26:04
  on and just talk about this and again, you know, test this
• 26:07
  microphone, which I think is working now.
• 26:10
  But yeah, this is good. This is good for the sector.
• 26:13
  It's going to draw more eyeballs and the valuation, my guess is,
• 26:18
  is SpaceX is training at a really hefty evaluation relative
• 26:22
  to its growth prospects. And so that's going to be really
• 26:26
  good when you translate into what is T space Mobile Rocket
• 26:31
  Lab, you know, some of these other companies, what what
• 26:34
  they're doing. But anyway, let me see.
• 26:39
  I'm just looking to see some questions here.
• 26:42
  Well, there are no question. All right, well, that's, that's
• 26:45
  my that's my space. It's short and sweet.
• 26:48
  Just wanted to comment on this and we'll talk again at some
• 26:52
  point in the future, I'm sure maybe maybe this evening.
• 26:54
  So more news comes out. Anyway, thank everyone.
• 26:59
  Thanks for listening to the AST Space Mover pod.
• 27:02
  If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the
• 27:05
  podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social
• 27:09
  media, or leave a rating and review.
• 27:11
  To catch all the latest news about AST Space Mobile, make
• 27:15
  sure to subscribe. Thanks again and I'll see you
• 27:18
  next time. We're doing something very, very
• 27:23
  big and I think with this technology we can really affect
• 27:26
  billion lives. ASP Space globally is the only
• 27:29
  company that has good technology to deliver cellular broadband
• 27:34
  connectivity directly from space to the everyday smartphone.
• 27:38
  People will just basically turn their phone and be seamless,
• 27:42
  regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to
• 27:44
  know that it's connected by satellite.
• 27:47
  Our role is to bring this into reality, always in partnership
• 27:51
  with the animal.